


Test Work for Coding

by serpentinne



Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 22:01:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29267643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serpentinne/pseuds/serpentinne
Summary: Just a chapter from one of my fics that I'm using to figure out some formatting.





	Test Work for Coding

Val thought back to the first time she'd met the Master, when he’d been hiding out in the abandoned church near Metz. She had just come into Eichhorst’s employ the day before, when she'd returned to the apartment where he'd held her captive. One day after finding out that monsters were real.

The first task she'd been assigned was to help Eichhorst pack the Master's belongings and prepare for their upcoming relocation across the border. He had been clearing a surface in what must have been the church’s storage area, clearing a path through which to wheel the Master’s box. He'd cleared everything except a pair of candlesticks, and glanced at them warily. Tentatively, he’d reached out and tapped one of the sticks with his finger. A bit of smoke erupted, accompanied by the smell of burning flesh.

“ _Scheiße_!” he'd cursed under his breath and shook his hand. The flesh would heal itself shortly, but the shock looked unpleasant.

“What -” she’d started to ask.

“Silver. Be useful and move these,” he’d snapped.

Now, a bit of that toxic metal was embedded in his flesh. 

Valérie wasn’t entirely sure what had occurred during Eichhorsts’ confrontation with Setrakian’s gang at Grand Central Station. But she did know one thing; they’d wounded her companion, and she was helpless to do anything about it. When he’d returned to his hidden flat within the hotel, she’d been eagerly waiting for tales of his success.

Instead, Thomas had limped down the corridor, his leg still smoking from the silver bullet embedded in his flesh. When she’d insisted on helping, he’d warned her off, concerned that the open wound may allow worms to escape and crawl under her skin. 

“I should have gone with you,” she fretted in the corner as she watched him heat a metal poker in the fireplace, preparing to cauterize the wound. She chewed on her thumbnail, “as backup.” 

Thomas continued to keep pressure on the wound with one hand and turn the glowing-hot poker with the other. “Valérie,” he said, “if you’re still in this flat by the time I’m finished then I will suck you dry.”

“But -” she started.

“Out!”

She left the room, but not the flat, choosing to idle in the unused kitchen area. A short time later the strigoi limped back into the room, clad in his usual pajama bottoms and tee shirt. Val wanted nothing more than to follow him to his bed, to curl up next to his warmth as they’d done so many times before. But that was not in the cards.

“What did I tell you to do, Valérie?” he asked as he stepped toward her deliberately, slowly, as she backed herself behind the kitchen island. 

She swallowed before answering. “To leave. I was - ”

“And yet here you are. Did you not hear what I said? I know you have a death wish, but this is a sad way to meet your end, don’t you think?”

Anger boiled hotly beneath her collar, working its way up her neck. “You’d kill me for this? You’d set yourself back because I was concerned that you were injured?”

“I survived two World Wars without your help! You were being bothersome. Like a fly!” he jabbed.

Valérie was so angry that she felt as if she’d left her body, an onlooker as a grim smile crept across her face. “Oh, I’ve read all about you, Thomas Eichhorst. You barely saw the battlefield. Is that why you’re so scared now?”

“Enough!” he roared, inhumanly loud. A crunching sound met her ears and she realized that he’d been resting his hand on the back of a kitchen chair. The wood had split beneath the force of the fingers, and he threw the pieces aside in rage.

She did leave, then. 

As soon as her feet hit the pavement, she was filled with an urge that hadn’t bothered her a single time since landing in New York. The urge to fall into oblivion. The urge for it all to just stop, if only temporarily. Resisting the pull to slip back into her old ways, she picked up her pace toward Stoneheart. A few glasses of wine and then some sleep. That’s what she needed. 

* * *

Upon arriving at Stoneheart, she liberated a bottle of wine from Eldritch’s ‘secret’ wine cellar and made her way to the lab. Was it a gross violation to consume food or drink in the lab? Yes. Had she set those rules herself, and was she prepared to violate them anyways? Also yes.

She worked until the sun peeked above the horizon. On the verge of falling asleep at her desk, she shut the laptop and stumbled half-asleep toward her rooms. She unlocked the door and turned the handle, pausing as an odd trepidation overtook her. She sniffed the air in the hallway, catching a faint whiff of a familiar scent. Like moist, warm dirt after a summertime rain.

Thomas sat with his knees crossed, reclining in a chair in the small sitting room of her flat. She let the door swing shut behind her, facing him.

“Have you come to kill me?” she asked him plainly, as if suggesting he get on with it if that was his intention; she didn’t have all day.

He remained seated for a moment, not answering immediately. Val set her laptop down and started to remove her earrings as he rose slowly from the chair. He approached where she stood, sans-limp, she noticed, until they stood nearly nose-to-nose, not touching. She watched his nostrils flare slightly as he deliberately took in her scent. _He’s smelling my fear_ , she thought idly, _or, rather, the lack of it_. 

A satisfied look settled upon his face. He then leaned forward, running the tip of his nose against her own before placing his lips upon hers tentatively, testing.

She allowed it, a short meeting of lips that was uncharacteristically soft and brief. 

“I thought I might stay the night,” he proposed quietly. By night, he meant day, of course. The sun had just risen.

Val wondered, not for the first time, if he could read minds. If he’d heard her fleeting thought back at his flat. Or, she dared to hope, maybe he missed nesting together as much as she did.

“I’ll get the curtains,” she replied, and went to draw the bedroom shades so that he could enter.

A short time later, they laid facing one another, swaddled in the warmth of a pile of blankets, absorbing one another’s heat. He’d removed his makeup and prosthetics, with one exception.

“You left your teeth in,” Val observed.

Thomas grinned, his false human smile shining through the near-dark. “It’s easier to kiss you this way.” 

Val felt a flutter in her stomach, but fought to push it down. Surely he had something to say about earlier?

“I see you’re feeling much better,” she prodded.

His grin faded and he nodded. There was a moment of silence as he propped himself up on his elbow, preparing what to say.

“Your death would cause me great distraction,” he admitted. “The threat I made...it was empty.”

“And yet.”

He nodded again. “And yet, I made it. I was angry that I allowed myself to be shot. That I disappointed the Master by not taking out Kent or the Jew.”

Val reached out to him, then, sliding toward him and laying her head upon his chest. “What happened earlier? I thought you were just going to confront Jim Kent.” She felt him sigh against her.

“I was right in my suspicions that Setrakian was behind Kent’s voicemail. But I’d expected them to be alone,” he shook his head. “He had several compatriots; more than I had anticipated. I admit I had certainly never expected them to be armed with silver bullets.”

“So who shot you? Not Kent, surely?” They chuckled together at the thought.

“I believe the culprit was Kent's coworker, Goodweather.”

“Nice name,” Val quipped.

“I'm sure it's been Anglicized.”

“Wait,” Val sat up, coming to a realization. The unusual name had rung a bell, and she was certain she’d seen it recently. “I know that name,” she said as she pulled away from her lover and went to retrieve her laptop from the sitting room.

Thomas was less than pleased when she turned on the computer’s bright display in the darkness, a faint sound escaping his lips.

Val paused and looked at the other side of the bed. 

“Did…did you just hiss?”

Thomas sniffed indignantly in response and pulled the covers over his head while she searched for the fellow scientist's name. She recalled something from the heaps of literature she'd been combing through hours before. An article from a journal on tropical medicine, which proposed blood transfusion as a treatment for malaria.

“Yup, right here,” she tapped her nail against the screen. “ _Martinez and Goodweather, 2011_. Interesting, he's only the second author. Martinez must be the brains.”

“Nora Martinez,” Thomas said, his voice muffled by the blankets. “Kent's other coworker. She was there last night.”

“Hm,” Val mused. “Interesting that our research should cross paths.” She clicked the laptop shut and her companion's head peeped out from beneath the blankets. 

“It's too bad I can't pick their brains,” Val lamented as she crawled back under the covers. She felt him grin against her hair as she laid back against his chest.

“Your wish may come true, my dear.”

Val felt her heart skip a beat, not accustomed to such terms of endearment.

“It just so happens that I know where these confederates are hiding. I will go there, tonight, to finish what I couldn't last night. With any luck, I can take Dr. Goodweather and his latin girlfriend alive. Just for you,” he gave her arm a squeeze.

“You plan on going after them alone again?” she questioned, worried to have a repeat of the past night. 

“I have an army of fellow strigoi at my disposal, sweetness. Allow us to do the grunt work, and then I'll call you in.”

_Sweetness_. Valérie clung to the sentiment as she drifted off to sleep.

* * *

T 

Come ASAP  
Knickerbocker Loans and Curios  
505 East 118th St.

**Today** 19:27

T 

Dress for dust.

19:28 

19:29

See you soon. 

It was 7:30 at night when Val awoke to the text message, unsurprised that she was alone. She hadn’t expected Thomas to be ready to meet her so early, and she hadn’t expected to sleep 11 hours. It was the wine’s fault, she was sure.

She arrived at the address in record time, wearing boots and a scarf that could easily be tucked up around her nose. She hadn’t been entirely sure what it meant to ‘ _dress for dust_ ’, but she immediately understood when she stepped into the building. The pawn shop didn’t look as if it had had much business in recent years, and most wares that hung out of easy reach had a thick layer of dust visible from every angle. 

Thomas appeared at the top of a set of stairs that led to the basement, grinning. The scientist went to ask whether or not he’d managed to apprehend Goodweather when a strange movement caught her eye. Several mirrors hung on the wall to Thomas’s left, the reflection flickering like portraits lit by candlelight. His reflections raised one of their eyebrows and followed her gaze, several sets of piercing blue eyes now staring back at her.

“Ah, yes. Rather old mirrors. They’re lined with silver; quite rare nowadays.”

“Silver’s really giving you a run for your money this week, isn’t it?” she teased.

His eyebrows returned briefly to their raised position. “Things will be looking up very soon,” he answered, waving for her to follow him down the stairs. “Unfortunately, our dear friends managed to find their way out the back entrance. But we now have their weapons.”

Val’s eyes grew wide as they entered the basement and observed the chaotic hoard of trinkets, jars, paper, and weaponry. She got a distinct feeling that Eichhorst would have to tip-toe around the room to successfully avoid touching anything made of silver. They both crept around the room, observing the room’s contents as they waited for Palmer to arrive.

She was peering through a mounted magnifying glass when she heard her companion talking quietly to himself in the far corner of the room. Whether he spoke to himself or the Master she wasn’t certain, but she approached to see what he’d been gazing at.

“It’s a heart,” Thomas explained without her having to ask. “A strigoi heart.”

She came to stand beside him and he let out a solitary laugh. “How sentimental.”

“Sentimental?” she asked. She’d assumed it was a sort of war trophy of the old man’s. The mass of grey and white flesh sat in a very large, hinged jar. It beat out a steady rhythm, despite being disconnected from any living body. It seemed to vibrate slightly, as if it sensed their presence.

The floor above creaked, signalling Palmer’s arrival. Thomas turned to look at Val and placed a hand on her shoulder as he passed by. “His wife’s.” 

An odd feeling began to stir in Val’s ribcage as she listened to Thomas climb the stairs. She stared at the heart in the jar, a heart full of worms, knowing that Thomas’s looked just the same. That his heart could go on beating outside of his body. That his body was just a vessel for the small creatures dwelling inside. Was she in love with a worm?

She suddenly felt sick to her stomach at the thought as it passed through her mind. She was in _love_. And with someone who couldn’t love her back. With someone who might not, technically, even exist. 

She watched a worm slither out from the flesh, reaching toward the surface of the jar. Reaching out in wait of nourishment from its human caretaker. Nourishment given freely, and out of love. That love, however, was inconsequential to the worm. It wanted blood, and blood alone.

Palmer’s butler Reggie entered the room first, his employer close behind him. Eldritch looked like a living human being for the first time since Val had known him. He strutted into the room, his typical arrogance inflated. Val had privately wondered several times why Thomas didn’t just give Palmer the white when he was so gravely ill. She’d assumed it was easier to deal with the wealthy old man when he was on the brink of death. His behavior after he entered the basement certainly supported her theory. 

“Dr. Rochette,” he nodded in greeting.

“You’re looking excellent, Eldritch. A miracle to be sure,” she prodded.

“One of the benefits of immortality, I suppose,” he replied smugly.

Val fought to look unsurprised by this news, Eichhorst not bothering to hide his surprised look over Palmer’s shoulder. She quickly excused herself from the awkward situation to peruse a bookshelf that had been calling to her. While Thomas explained to Palmer that he was not, in fact, a member of the undead, Val admired the amazing collection of occult and historical literature gathering dust on the shelves. Most of the books were likely very rare, and some appeared to even be handwritten.

“I want everything packed up and shipped back to Stoneheart,” Eldritch announced sharply.

“Mr. Palmer?” Val called out, stopping him before he ascended the stairs. 

“ _Yes?_ ” 

“Is it possible that these be delivered to the laboratory?” she gestured to the books. “They may hold valuable information and I could get through them quickly.”

Thomas glanced sideways and picked up one of the large, leather-bound tomes that Val was practically salivating over. “Some light reading for you,” he agreed with a smirk. “Should last you a couple of days.”

Palmer, always untrusting, didn’t look as if he liked the idea, but acquiesced before sweeping dramatically up the stairs. Val immediately set to work placing them into piles, reveling in their smell.

“Is it here?” Thomas whispered excitedly as soon as Palmer was out of earshot. Of course, she knew what he meant. The Book.

“Not from what I’ve seen so far. I was hopeful too. If it were to be anywhere, you’d think it might be here,” she said sadly. They’d spent so much time in the past year trying to find the mythical Occido Lumen and hadn’t even come close. Every lead had been a dead end, and had served as little more than a distraction from their daily duties for the Master. At least she was well-traveled now.

“The moving truck will be here shortly to bring everything to Stoneheart. Why don’t you set aside what you want to take and label it, then we can let the crew do their job.”

That sounded slightly out of character to Val. “You don’t want to supervise the moving crew?”

He reached up and tucked a stray hair behind her ear. “Let’s go out tonight. I know a place.”


End file.
